Chaklu: A paradise for peace lovers

If you heart lies in the mountains, 

in its silence and stillness, 

If in its embrace lies your peace, 

then waste no tine and come over

to seek refuge in its bosom here in Chaklu, 

a small village near Mashobra in Himachal Pradesh. 

If you have always longed for walks down the dwindling road

with trees playing the sun, lining up your way, 

If soaking the sun in your eyes, and baking the body 

till it gets in sync with the soul is what you seek, 

then this is the place for you. 

You can set aside the alarm bells 

because you would not need them, 

The morning ll come knocking in your window pane, 

you can play with the butterflies 

Or see the twilight fade into a night 

and then gaze at the stars, tracing it's path. 

Emotional Saina takes CWG gold, a title to heal Rio Olympic pain

Looking up at the sky, Saina Nehwal let out a scream after grabbing the coveted gold, eight years after she had become the toast of the country with a maiden CWG title at 2010 Delhi Games.
Saina played with aggression and never let the intensity slip to outdo her younger compatriot P V Sindhu, who had taken over the mettle as India's premier star after her Olympic and world championship silver.
It was a moment she has been waiting for long ever since suffering a knee injury at the Rio Games. Her emotional reaction after the win was not as much about celebration as it was a release for all the pent up emotions that she endured in the last couple of years.
"It's a very emotional moment for me after the disappointing loss in Rio due to injury," said the second seeded Indian after her win.
In the run-up to the Games, Saina faced flak after she threatened to pullout if her father Harvir Singh is not allowed to stay with her in the village. She insisted his presence was important for her success and she proved her point when she beat Sindhu 21-18 23-21 in the finals today.
"It's a gift to my father and my mother, my country. I really term it as next to my Olympic medal and my world No.1 ranking. So I would keep it somewhere there," she added.
Injuries are an integral part of an athletes' life but the intra-articular injury to her right knee just days before Rio Olympics robbed Saina of a chance to win that coveted gold at the Olympics.
She had to undergo surgery and what came next was weeks and months of rehabilitation.
Saina, who had achieved the world no 1 ranking in 2015, now was reduced to a bystander. She lost valuable time and there were times when she even thought of giving up the game she loved so much all together.
But champions are made of different clay and Saina needed to embrace it wholeheartedly to heal and salvage any hope of a quick comeback. Within three months, she was back on the court to test her knee at the China Open and she also played in Hong Kong and Macau.
As time passed she healed a bit more and eventually claimed the Malaysia Masters last year but a major title was hard to come by despite the fact that she was making the quarters and semifinals consistently.
Then came a bronze at the Glasgow World Championship, which led to a reunion with long-time mentor and chief coach Pullela Gopichand, whom she had parted ways in 2014 after an consistent run.
The world championship final between Sindhu and Japan's Nozomi Okuhara turned out to be an epic contest that clocked 110 minutes and it made Saina realise that she has to step up her fitness level further if she has to achieve her absolute best.
But injuries continued to trouble her as she developed some ankle issue. She came back again to reach the finals of Indonesia Masters this year. However, results still continued to elude her in major events as a quarterfinal exit against USA's Beiwen Zhang was followed by a first-round ouster from All England.
This gold at Gold Coast will go a long way in healing all those scares of the last few years and hopefully pave the way for more titles before she walks into the sunset.

What Srikanth's emergence into a sporting hero teaches us?

A new sporting hero has emerged. Not one, who comes from the upper echelons of cricket but from a sport which was developed in British India, became a hobby sports before emerging as India's most trusted discipline at the Olympics in the last decade.

For two weeks now, badminton has trumped cricket probably for the first time in history and the engineer of this turnaround is 24-year-old Kidambi Srikanth.

Last two Sundays, Srikanth stood on the podium with the Indonesia and Australia Open crowns shining bright in his hands and these were moments that this country had starved for many decades. The first Indian to win back-to-back Super Series titles, his fourth title -- a feat unmatched by any Indian men.

Life will hopefully not remain the same for the Andra Pradesh lad anymore. He will be rightly hailed for his achievement, bestowed with accolades including cash prizes from different quarters. Hopefully he will earn a few sponsorship deals and whopping contracts and between all this Srikanth would probably just think how important but futile at the same time all this hullaballoo is in the larger context. 

Perhaps, thoughts of him quietly landing in India and rushing away back home last year after the Rio Olympics would still be fresh in his mind. All the glitz and glamour now will probably heal the pain of that heart-wrenching loss to Lin Dan in the quarterfinals but it won't erase the dent, not until he achieves his dreams of winning a medal at Tokyo. 

If you scratch the surface, you will find a story of mental fortitude. In a short four-year career in senior circuit, Srikanth has seen both the highs and lows. After bursting onto the scene with a stunning win that demystified the legendary Super Dan at 2014 China Super Series Premier and then finding a place in the heart of his countrymen with a win at the India Super Series in 2015, he went through a run of poor form. 

He qualified for Olympics but saw his dream crash after coming within touching distance of a medal. Worse happened. He suffered a stress fracture in his right ankle and spent three months on the sidelines. With his ankle in bandage, he decided to work on his upper body. He spent hours with his physio and trainers, doing what he was in his hands. His ranking dropped. From the high of World No 3, he had sunk to the 30s by the time he had made a comeback at the Premier Badminton League. 

He had a decent outing at PBL but that didn’t translate into success in international circuit. He lost early at Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold. He went back, worked hard and then came looking for redemption at India Super Series but he crashed out in the opening round, leaving him stunned and silent. He hardly could make out what had happened, finding it difficult to explain his loss to the reporters at Siri Fort stadium.

But one of the rare traits that defines a champion is the never-say-die-attitude and his loss at the Olympics and those two weeks when he had shut himself from the world had left him little detached from both win and loss. His equanimity in success and failure was tested in the last two weeks and he came out in flying colours. 

His win over Olympic champion Chen Long and his compatriot and friend H S Prannoy's stunning victory over Lee Chong Wei and Chen Long showed the world and more importantly to Indian shuttler that they are not unbreakable. 

Perhaps, this is what Indian badminton have gained in the last two weeks, the confidence to go all out against whosoever comes in the way and remain unscathed by both success and failure.

Perhaps Srikanth would go on to win a world championship in August or the All England Championship next year or maybe he won’t but one thing for sure the day is not far when an Indian will certainly achieve all these. It’s time to grab our place under the sun.

"Development comes at a cost. We need to be ready to make sacrifices for the country."

Agreed. But how do you explain this to a mother who has lost her six months old baby. Does she figure in your list of martyr. Can you lend a flag to wrap her body? How do you explain this to the pregnant woman who collapsed after standing in queue under the sun all day?

We are all dancing in this euphoria of cleansing our economy of black money. My grocer tells me now India will be developed. "For first time rich ll feel what it means to be poor, even if it is for a day." He narrares me stories of some collector who had some 35lakhs hidden behind walls and of his driver friend, whose boss had 10lakhs under his bed. He seemed happy, his gleaming face was washed with a sort of hope that he had not seen in ages.

I don't know if I should bask alongwith him in his misplaced sunshine or believe what my common sense needles me to comprehend.

What is black money? Is it only these stacks of notes that have been turned into a heap of waste paper with the stroke of a magic wand. It would have been during the 80s.

But 1991changed everything, it ushered in a highways of wealth; it created a system which soon was rigged with people with power and influence and lies rotten after 25 long years. Trade invoicing, benami equity funds, hawala-- a plethora of illegal means and ways emerged to earn illegal money, unaccounted wealth; sharks with sharp teeths bite off big pieces from our developing India, the more they stayed away from the short arms of law, the more they became in brothers in arms with politicIans, more delusional became the cattle class and mango people, accepting corruption and money laundering as a way of life.

This "bold" decision will perhaps bring these people back to earth. Hopefully instilling fear.

But does all these suffering for 1.25billion people will be worth it? How much black money we will be able to seize, convert, pump into the economy? How will you quantity it? Will it kill the parallel shadow economy?

Will it bring a tomorrow when atleast 60 % of the poor mute people ll be able to dream again?
Will our kids ll be able to breath again under a clear sky? Will a Dalit can walk shoulder to shoulder to a brahmin?

Perhaps, I am blind. Or I have misplaced expectation, or I have lost my mind. After all we are all like milling clouds, swaying anyway the wind blows, hoping for an opportunity to rain down and find our green home. So let us get swayed, dancing to this tune once again, Just hope it doesn't end with a mighty fall.

Cinema & society: The Obsession for Entertainment

Entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. 

That's the problem with 'Bollywood' or probably everything around us. We want to get entertained in everything that we listen or see on screen.

So, when the cars go flying in hot pursuits and heroes indulge in gravity-defying acrobatics, it gives us our dose of adrenaline rush and quenches our thirst of thrill, it satiates our craving for violence and sex, or in fine, emotions which otherwise we are not able to express. 

In our repressed society, most live like slaves jailed in our own cage, enslaved to our secrets, bottling everything inside. So we like to suck up all the on-screen delicacies, licking every drop of melting mussy love or erotica that Bollywood serves us.

No matter, how much the critics cry foul or the fans of Indian cinema smirk or scream in shame, such commercial potboilers will continue to be dished out and savored by the audience, who are so burdened by their everyday responsibilities of life that there is no space or time in their heart and mind to watch a real life story. 

Reality bores us. So we prefer to stay away from cinema which pinches us or questions our reality. So, a movie like 'Perched, Court' or 'Aligarh' or any film dealing with human trafficking or on any social issue will not have many takers, unless, they are written and portrayed with dollops of correct comic timings and carried on the shoulders of some big star. 

And if it so happens that a star acts in such a film, and the movie sinks, it further dissuades him and fellow actors to tread the path again and thus the circle of life continues. 

We all are stuck in this virtual world for eternity and nothing will push us to change that, although most of the film aficionados, who believe Cinema as an art, strive to bring that change.

Sometimes some exceptional story is told in an extraordinary way by filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Vishal Bharadwaj and Shoojit Sarkar but most find it hard to find that balance, either turning it into a tear-jerker or a mockery in the name of comedy.

So the story continues. We don't want to see the bitter world around us. We don't want to see why so many people, army and civilians alike, are dying in Kashmir or northeast India or at the red corridor, we don't want to see how voices were crushed during the emergency, we don't want to see how people were stuck in a quagmire of emotions during the Sikh or Gujarat riots or partitions, we don't want to see the blood or hear the screams. 

No one wants to see the reasons which drives individuals to take decisions, No one wants to see the realities that dictates one's action. Probably we are either stuck in our so called self-righteous moral arrogance or we don't want to accept the truth because we are just too comfortable living a life we have learnt to believe in our mind as truth or perhaps we have forgotten the art of listening, observing and learning.

In a country, where most people still fight over what we eat, read, wear or look, cinema could have been a medium to bring that change in perception. It could have been a platform to educate them about the changing scenario around us, teach them about the taboos and social evils that plague this country, problems which is eating our roots away. 

Where education failed, cinema could have been that bridge of enlightenment.

A postmortem of 'Baar Baar Dekho'

Often crystal stones can hide amidst diamonds but when they are all by themselves, the lie gets noticed and they are exposed, sometimes too easily. While this could be a poor analogy to make, Siddhartha Malhotra and Katrina Kaif suffers from a similar fate in 'Baar Baar Dekho'.

The two actors with tremendous screen presence flourished in scenes where they have to dance, sing and act all cutie-pie but fails when have to emote raw human emotions. Better actors would have hold on the attention for longer time. Of course, even that perhaps would not have been enough to save this film because of the poor script and screenplay.

In Indian film industry, we have not experimented with the idea of time travel or repetition of a day like in films 'GroundHog day' or 'Time travellers wife'. So in that respect, there was novelty in the idea for Indian audience. But it is a cut-throat world where implementation matters more than intentions and the film doesn't deliver much in that respect.

Like most rom-com from Dharma productions, the film is bright and vibrant in colours and texture and looks very slick with good music. But the banality of all that happens in the script is a problem.

The fact that the protagonist skipping timeline of his life is the main plot of the film, it is introduced too late and with comic treatment. The film lacks in enough twists and details that can create the confusion which needs a resolution in the end and drags to deliver the message.

Also Jay being a mathematical genius doesn't affect the film in anyway. His ambition to research on vedic time travel also doesn't affect because it wasn't actually a time travel film like 'About time' or Time Travellers Wife. It was more of magic realism.

If the character would have used his knowledge of vedic science to resolve this problem then it would have mattered. It was afterall more a story of an ambitious man who doesn't give time to family to follow his dream but he not realising it for most parts is a rare stupidity that doesn't suit such a mathematical genius.

Baar Baar Dekho is not the worst film that have been made on relationship but it lacks clarity and enough punch to entertain or interest the audience. So another opportunity lost because it had potential of being something different for Indian film industry.

Sadly for Katrina, after 'Fitoor' it is her second flop. Both films had interesting story line but lacked implementation. For Siddhartha, it is a wake up call to work harder on his acting skills to come back stronger with his next film.

SRK back with a bang with 'FAN'

It is all about saying sorry in the end.

Fan is a dialogue between a star and his fan. Its about mutual respect for each other. It is about not crossing that fine line and it is about saying sorry, sometimes even if you are not wrong.

Over the years, SRK has gained this reputation of being rude.someone who despite all the stardom have equally gained the criticism after being involved in various incidents whether it is Wankhade stadium or it is slapping Shirish Kunder. SRK has, in fact, confessed in an interview that he is not someone who can say sorry easily and it has affected his relation with many. So in that context, Fan is his answer to his fans and critics alike.              

Fan shows why SRK's fans expect so much from him. He was refreshing and spontaneous as a young Gaurav. The way he brings forth the ethos of a fan, I don't think any of the new comers could do. As Aryan Khanna, SRK has played a narcissist character, who is willing to dance in weddings for money and can sometimes take shit from the wealthy to keep his stardom. But at the same time, he is also human deep inside. In short, SRK did justice to both the roles - a star and a fan.

One may argue with the climax or the violence of protagonist Gaurav, who is over obsessed with the star but perhaps the idea was to hammer down the point home through a violent character because most fans are not psycho.

The action chase scenes, whether it is escaping from Delite hotel or up and down the roof tops, was well executed. Though it reminds of some scenes of Hollywood action movie but it is racy with fast edits. Jazzy music during the tussle in the cyber cafe was also good.

However, Director Maneesh Sharma and screen play writer Habib Faisal should have spent more time on the script in the second half where Gaurav has a go at his idol. Here logic goes for a toss. Why to take the trouble of going through 3D scanning for a younger and different look only to blow all the difference away in the second half?

If one can look away from such loopholes, Fan will prove to be an enjoyable ride for any film aficionados who has loved his anti-hero roles in films such as Darr, Baazigar and Anjaam.

In fine, Fan is a homecoming of an actor who seemed to have lost himself in stardom and number game.

P.S.     For argument sake, probably a star would have done the same with someone who used violence to reach out to him. But possibly an interaction with him first would have been a better approach considering the fact that not always a fan takes law into own hands to meet his idol. But then a star will always execute more caution before meeting someone who has managed to thrash another star.

The concept of an obsessed fan is not new and has been used in many Hollywood films in the past but SRK's FAN is nothing like it. Here are few links which gives a glimpse:

http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/robert-de-niros-the-fan-kathy-bates-misery-5-hollywood-films-shah-rukh-khans-fan-looks-inspired-from/